Pinterest Tools Make Social Media Engagement Easy

How easy is it for your blog readers, website visitors, leads and customers to add your blog and site into their online conversations and lives? Can they, with a single click, blend your content into their social networking world? If they can, you’re a step ahead of the competition.

Several years ago, Staples introduced its “Easy Button” concept. Talk about addressing the real problem people want to solve. They want life to be easy. If a task isn’t easy, it will need to have a huge benefit to the individual in order to entice them to do it.

That extends to how website visitors interact with your site as well. If you don’t make it easy for them, the chances of them sharing and engaging with your content drop dramatically. On Pinterest, this means using buttons and widgets that give your visitors one-click options. Make it easy.

Why Does Pinterest Matter, Even for B2B?

Pinterest may be used primarily by women, and dominated by visually-driven content such as crafts, food, design and fashion, but it has potential for many businesses outside that arena.

With more than 7 million users, and the ability for pinboards to appear in Google search results, it is another way of showcasing your company’s creative content and ranking for the longtail keywords your customers are searching. If you are already fully involved in inbound marketing, you have the content at hand to create many of the pinboards Act-On suggests here for B2B marketers.

Ready to make your Pinterest presence a reality? Download our ebook on How to Optimize and Measure Your Pinterest Business Account.

Case studies, templates and white papers? Blog posts? Infographics? If you’ve got them, use them!

Here’s a primer on getting started: Your First Steps for Building Business on Pinterest.

But how do you make it easy for your readers to share your content to Pinterest or interact with your Pinterest board? By using the built-in buttons and widgets that give them one-click connections.

Pinterest Buttons and Widgets to Make Social Media Engagement Easy:

Pin It button

This has become a nearly ubiquitous feature of any website or blog with images, so don’t let your blog or website be the one where readers can’t find it. The Pin It button lets website visitors create a pin right from the page on your website that interests them. It may be their way of sharing information about your services with a colleague or of saving a useful blog post for future reference.

Either way, by making it easy, you are increasing the chances that your web pages are shared and saved for more people to view.

Follow button

If you are actively cultivating your Pinterest presence, sharing not only your own content, but building boards with useful content from other sources that is of interest to your target audience, regular readers will want to follow you because they know you’re finding and sharing the good stuff. Make following you easy, too.

You can embed the button where you would like it to appear on your website. Good options would be on your blog’s home page, your About Us page, or in a resource library.

Profile widget

Do you want to show your website visitors a sampling of what they will find on your Pinterest boards? The profile widget showcases what you are pinning with images.

This can be a way of building your Pinterest following, by giving visitors a view of up to 30 of your latest pins.

Board widget

The board widget is similar to the profile widget, but shows a selection of pins from a single board. This works great to add to a particular page or section of your site. For instance, a restaurant could showcase its “Creative Cocktails” pinboard on the page for its drink menu, or its “Special Event Snapshots” pinboard on its calendar page.

Using Pinterest boards and the profile and board widgets can be a way of expanding the images you use to build brand awareness, even if your actual website is limited in image opportunties.

A word of caution about Pinterest

If you are using Pinterest as your primary repository for images, make sure you are not directing traffic away from your website, never to return. Inbound marketing relies on visitors coming to your site and converting into leads on landing pages.

Every pin you create with your own content should include a link to a relevant offer’s landing page, to your blog posts, or to some other page on your website that matches the subject of the pin.

With that in mind, you can use Pinterest to help build your brand’s image, develop a relationship with your readers, prospects and customers, and to drive visitors to your website to become leads. Find the details on how to create these buttons and widgets, along with advice on optimizing your Pinterest account for search in How to Optimize and Measure Your Pinterest Business Account.